Darton College
Lea Henry
Head Basketball Coach
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
May 4, 2011 (Albany, Georgia)...Darton College announced today that Lea Henry has been named as their Head Women's Basketball Coach.
Lea Henry began her coaching career at the University of Tennessee under legendary head coach Pat Summit. From 1985 to 1990 Henry served in the capacity of Assistant Coach at Stetson University and the University of Florida. She became the Head Basketball Coach at Mercer University in 1990 and served there until becoming the Head Coach at Georgia State University in 1994. She coached there for 16 seasons. She has led teams to three conference tournament championships, six conference regular season championships, three NCAA appearances, and one WNIT appearance. Henry is a three-time Conference Coach of the Year and a three-time Georgia Division Coach of the Year. In addition, Henry coached 51 Conference All-Academic team members.
"Darton College is thrilled to add Lea Henry to our team. She is a world class figure in women's basketball who has accumulated incredible success in the sport," said Athletic Director Mike Kiefer. "We are anticipating that Henry will continue to move our program forward in a manner that will make Darton College and the community incredibly proud."
Henry played college basketball at the University of Tennessee, where she was a 4-year starter and attended the Final Four three times. In 1984, Henry led the USA to a gold medal as the starting point guard for the women’s team. Since 1984, Henry has directed Lea Henry Camp of Champs, which became L & G Camp of Champs in 2005. L & G Camp of Champs is a youth character education program dedicated to producing successful basketball players while positively shaping their lives. Camps are held all over the United States. In 2006, Henry was inducted into the Georgia Sports Hall of Fame.
Brandon Podgorski
Assistant Basketball Coach
Brandon Podgorski enters his second season as an assistant basketball coach at Darton. He was an assistant during the 2009-10 season and served as an assistant boys’ basketball coach at Deerfield-Windsor School in Albany last season.
Podgorski came to Darton in September 2009 from Wabash College where he was an assistant coach from 2007-09. He helped lead the Little Giants to back-to-back North Coast Athletic Conference title games for the first time in school history. Prior to Wabash, Podgorski served as an assistant boys’ varsity coach at Bloomington (IN) High School North (2000-2001), conference champions and state semi-finalists; head seventh grade boys coach at Jackson Creek (Bloomington, IN) Middle School (2002-2003), city and county champions; and has led three different high school-level AAU teams to qualify for their national championships – Bloomington White (2002), Spiece Select 2008 (2003), and Cardinal Hoops (2005), a team he founded and coached. He also coached for three summers in Europe (2007-2009) as part of the People to People student ambassador program. In 2008, he led his boys’ U16 team to a fourth-place finish at the World Games in Vienna, Austria.
A graduate of Indiana University, Podgorski is also the Fitness Center Director at Darton. He earned his Master of Science in Recreation and Sport Sciences from Ohio University and holds the Certified Strength and Conditioning Specialist distinction from the National Strength and Conditioning Association. Podgorski is single and resides in Albany.
